In Rehearsal

Here are a few images from today's rehearsal. Our next performance will be in 23five's Activating the Medium Festival on April 17th in San Francisco.

Instruments for the wind piece "Greater Than 20 Knots"

Setups for the new melting glacier piece

The hanging water drippers will be replaced by icicles when we play live. In this piece water drips down into amplified glass beakers and petrie dishes. The stone slabs, from Breaker Island in Antarctica, will be played by rubbing and clinking ice across their surfaces.

Talk and Instrument Demo Thursday March 11

I'll be discussing my music and demonstrating my natural-object instruments, including several built with Antarctic materials, at this week's meeting of the Bay Area Computer Music Technology Group. It's free and all are welcome.

Presentations by Women Artist Technologists
Thursday March 11, 7pm
Grey Area Foundation for the Arts
55 Taylor Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
more details

Chattermarks Field Recordings CD

Now available...
CHATTERMARKS: FIELD RECORDINGS FROM PALMER STATION, ANTARCTICA

This new CD is a collection of field recordings of Antarctic wildlife and soundscapes from my January 2009 trip to Palmer Station. Tracks include sounds from Adélie penguins, southern elephant seals, brown skuas, brash ice, icebergs, glaciers, wind, and Antarctic storms.

I went to Antarctica to develop musical compositions, but I began by simply listening. Each day, as Oona and I explored Palmer's landscapes and ecosystems, I studied and recorded the wildlife and natural sounds I encountered. Of course, some of these field recordings I am incorporating into my musical compositions, but many of them are fascinating in their own right. This album is comprised of my favorite undeveloped Antarctic field recordings and I hope you will enjoy listening to the sounds of Palmer Station as much as I did.

You can buy the album as a digital download or on CD through Bandcamp. MP3s can be purchased through iTunes.

Special thanks to photographer Jon Brack whose images are on the cover and back of the CD. Several more of Jon's photos are inside the CD amongst the liner notes. Jon is currently working a second season down at Palmer Station. You can see more of his photographs here.

Recordings of my Antarctic musical compositions will be released in the future.

Activating the Medium Festival April 16-17

I am excited to announce that my next concert of Antarctic compositions will be in 23Five's Activating the Medium XIII, this April in San Francisco. The theme of this year's festival is ICE, so my work should fit right in.

I'm planning to premiere three new compositions in addition to performing the pieces I have already completed. The first new work is inspired by melting glaciers and will feature icicles played live onstage. The second will be a duet for penguin bones and penguin vocalizations, and the third will combine the limpet shell instrument with recordings of underwater ice. More details coming soon...

April 16, 2010
G*Park
Joshua Churchill
Adam Sonderberg
Panel / Lecture hosted by Cheryl Leonard

April 17, 2010
Cheryl E. Leonard- Antarctic works
Pedestrial Deposit
Jesse Burson
Rale

The Lab
2948 16th Street (at Capp)
San Francisco, CA 94103

BASEbot Listening Salon Feb. 21

I will be sharing my Antarctic adventures, sounds, compositions and instruments at Bay Area Sound Ecology's BASEbot 005.

SUNDAY, February 21st, 2010
2:30 pm doors, starting promptly at 3
~an hour of formal presentations followed by Q&A and mingling.

at Dan Dugan Sound Design (directions)
290 Napoleon Street Studio E, San Francisco, CA 94124

Recordist, composer and instrument builder Cheryl E. Leonard will present field recordings from Antarctica, excerpts of works composed from those recordings, and a short musical instrument demo followed by a Q&A.

If there is sufficient interest and time, afterward there will be an open-salon listening and discussion period – providing an opportunity to play your short (under five minute) sound excerpts and to discuss ideas or works in progress. We will provide a CD player and minijack hookup for iPods and the like.

The event will be recorded and made available via BASE's forthcoming podcast. I will post a link to the podcast when it becomes available.

Women in Antarctica

The NSF has just posted an interesting article about the first American women in Antarctica. Check it out here.

Update/Recommended Listening and Reading

I'm busy putting together a CD of my favorite undeveloped field recordings from Palmer Station, which I expect to release in January 2010. More details coming soon!
Once the field recordings CD is complete I'll focus on constructing additional Antarctic-object instruments, and writing and recording the rest of my set of Antarctic music compositions. I have three pieces finished so far, but I think there will be ten total. I'll be performing these pieces live in a series of concerts throughout 2010. Performance info will be posted here as it becomes available.

In the meantime, if you have a hankering for some stormy/icy/polar-type sounds I suggest you take a listen to the following recordings:
Jana Winderen- Heated
Jana Winderen- Submerged
Chris Watson - Weather Report
Chris Watson & BJ Nilsen - Storm
Douglas Quinn - Antarctica

And I very highly recommend Meredith Hooper's book The Ferocious Summer: Adelie Penguins and the Warming of Antarctica.

Cheers!